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The Aesthetics of Antichrist : From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe by John Parker is a work of fiction available to read on EtoBox.

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In Dr. Faustus , Christopher Marlowe wrote a profoundly religious drama despite the theater's newfound secularism and his own reputation for anti-Christian irreverence. The Aesthetics of Antichrist explores this apparent paradox by suggesting that, long before Marlowe, Christian drama and ritual performance had reveled in staging the collapse of Christianity into its historical opponents―paganism, Judaism, worldliness, heresy. By embracing this tradition, Marlowe's work would at once demonstrate the theatricality inhering in Christian worship and, unexpectedly, resacralize the commercial theater. The Antichrist myth in particular tells of an impostor turned prophet: performing Christ's life, he reduces the godhead to a special effect yet in so doing foretells the real second coming. Medieval audiences, as well as Marlowe's, could evidently enjoy the constant confusion between true Christianity and its empty look-alikes for that very reason: mimetic degradation anticipated some final, as yet deferred revelation. Mere theater was a necessary prelude to redemption. The versions of the myth we find in Marlowe and earlier drama actually approximate, John Parker argues, a premodern th

Who reads The Aesthetics of Antichrist : From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe?

Author

John Parker

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published

2007

Language

EN

ISBN

9780801463549

Category

work of fiction

Subjects

History, Literary Fiction, Literary Criticism

Rating

2.8 / 5 (2 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14